News Article

KTM Bicycles Changes Management

MATTIGHOFEN, Austria – Operational management of KTM Bicycles has been transferred to Johanna Urkauf and Stefan Limbrunner. By the end of this month, longtime Managing Director Franz Leingartner will retire. Also KTM Bicycle owner Carol Urkauf-Chen will step back from the daily operation and join the supervisory board.

Franz Leingartner and Carol Urkauf-Chen will pull out while Johanna Urkauf and Stefan Limbrunner take over the daily management. - Photo KTM

KTM Bicycles increased its turnover from 100 million euro in 2010 to 240 million in the fiscal year 2017/18 reports the Austrian news media Nachrichten AT. The company is fully focused on e-bikes on its main market Germany. The report accounts that KTM Bicycles produces 850 units a day of which 600 to 650 are e-bikes. “In 2017 we made 66,000 e-bikes, for this year we expect some 88,000 and for next year we have planned 110,000 units,” said Stefan Limbrunner in the Nachrichten AT report.

‘Made in Austria’

Carol Urkauf-Chen and her former husband Hermann Urkauf acquired KTM Bicycles from the insolvent KTM in the early nineties. Step by step she built up the company and since 2014, KTM Bicycles are regarded as ‘Made in Austria’ as design, prototyping and assembly are done in the Austrian city of Mattighofen.

KTM Bicycles has been in news frequently since Susanne Puello and her business partner Stefan Pierer of KTM Industries AG introduced a line of bicycles and e-bikes on the market at Eurobike 2017. “On August, 1, 2017 Stefan Pierer came to us and asked us about a collaboration, possibly a purchase, but without any paper explanation. Shortly after that he (Stefan Pierer ed.) and our competitor in Germany announced a cooperation for an e-bike production called Pexco while I never got any written offer or explanation,” said Urkauf-Chen in the Nachrichten AT report last week Friday.

A few days before the report on KTM Bicycles in Nachrichten AT, KTM Industries CEO Stefan Pierer said in the same Austrian media, “I would have liked to come to an agreement and work out a joint solution, but that was not possible with Ms Urkauf-Chen. As a result, the competition revives.” Pierer decides to join Susanne Puello’s new project. “We already sell 35,000 to 40,000 vehicles in the German-speaking countries via our subsidiary Husqvarna,” says Pierer.